Use thrifted items and items you have to create a rustic fall mantel with touches of burlap, gold, white and iron with this mantel idea.
It's officially fall so I'm embracing it and sharing with you our fall 2013 mantel, so even though my flowers still look good, the weather has turned here (sigh...) and cozy, warm decorating is finally starting to appeal to me.
My whole decorating right now is leaning towards a cottage-farmhouse look with industrial accents (you can follow my Pinterest Board with all my inspiration pins here), so for our fall mantel I've gone with a neutral look that incorporates burlap, distressed wood and iron.
I started out with this 'mantel in progress' about a week ago (which you saw if you follow me on Instagram!) - you might recognize the star from our gallery wall that I'm redoing now after we painted the great room.
I think I've mentioned before that I just start pulling things from around the house that strike my fancy, set them up and then edit/add to as I walk by for about a week or so. I usually decide on the largest item - in this case I wanted to replace our vintage black window-mirror with this burlap cocoa bean sack I got for $2 a few months ago. After deciding I didn't want to replace the star on the gallery wall I set it on the mantel and found I liked the juxtaposition of the shiny mirror with the rough burlap.
Once I had those two elements, I just found a few things to repeat them - the iron cake stand & burlap candle wraps - and then layered in some distressed white wood pieces, some of my white pumpkins, some candles and feathers.
I pulled out some thrift store brass because it seems to echo the burlap's golden color nicely and then I tied the two together with a super simple craft - gold burlap candle wraps.
I'm sure I'll probably add to (or take away) from this mantel as the season progresses (it's what happened with our 2012 fall mantel, too), because that's part of the fun of decorating for fall. Our leaves haven't really changed yet here, so when we start getting those fabulous fall colors, I'll probably want to add them to our mantel and shelves.
Have you started decorating for fall?
